George Allan England

“ So Schmidt, he move. He try for one day, for two days, to stand his ground and meet it among men; but his nerf is not good any more. So he go—go light. Hoping, of course, to swing back around to the south through the Auas Mountains and maybe reach Port Ilheo and get avay to the sea in a canoe, and try to be picked up by a steamer. It is a slim chance, but it is better as sitting still and not daring ever to sleep—vaiting for hands to get you by der neck, at night, and squeeze.
“Rawson, he follow. ”

“ The very last place at the end of the whole, wide world. If such a thing is possible as to bury a man alive, it would be at Windhoek. Schmidt make up his mind it vill be the last stand. Beyond Windhoek he vill not go. ”

“ No birds, no life, only sometimes a starved lion, and the camels run by imported Arabians for the transport-trains up-country. Germans can't do nodding mit camels, gentlemen. No white man can do it. The camel balk, and he veep, and he die, and he get up wrong end first und throw you ten feet avay and—but no matter. Not even the camel can live there naturally. Nodding lives, but only a kind of horny bug called spinnekops. Ven he bite you, which he always do if he possibly can, it is good if you haf your vill already made—because you cannot make it at all, after the bite. ”

“ Forty soldiers once die there in one month, out of sixty. And as for the convicts—Gott knows, maybe. Enteric fever, and zymotic, and so on. Also they hang the water up in a slimy canvas bag, to cool it. Not one white woman there, not one. Nice, aint it—for a man like Schmidt?
“Nobody go in the sun, between nine and five. If they go, it burn all the skin off, wherever it touch. What vork is done, hauling up supplies to the troops und convicts, mit twenty donkeys and two Kafirs on every vagon, comes by night—by the short, hot night, so hot you can't sleep anyhow.” ”

“ SO we—aoh—so I brought him in on my howdah, to Bhagalpur,” concluded Colonel Fitzhugh McBride, of His Majesty's Own Punjabi Lancers, “and the bally natives made a tremendous pooja and banged drums and offered up rice and melted butter and generally became extravagant. ”

“ They lay right in der bush, behind rocks, and catch the Germans and take avay their rifles. Sometimes they take avay field-guns, too. Use 'em? You bet they use 'em, all right, ven they got 'em! They sometimes catch some missionaries, sometimes some soldiers, and gif them to the women. Also the Herero women haf bad manners. They cut up white men by leetle inches, mit stone knifes. That is why at Swakopmund you vill see hunderts of Herero women kept in a thorn-bush kraal, guarded by soldiers and made to vork hard, mit whips, and a dozen or two dying effery day. ”

“ And he tell how brafe he and the odder man fight the Hereros and how they kill five and the rest run avay. And his story go. They don't suspect nodding. So the soldiers leave the Hereros to dry up on the rocks, but they bury Schmidt, right there, black viskers und all. Then they pile a big lot of rocks on him. And he is there—now. So.
“And Rawson, he go avay from there mit the soldiers carrying him, and he still alive. ”